Shadows Fall
by SugarQueenLL
Summary: Series of one shots, related to the plot but not necessarily the book characters. I own nothing.
1. Waiting in Between the Trees

**Because I like 3rd person limited a lot more and I want to flesh out the universe outside of the given cast of characters and plot (and make Lorien less completely good, nothing bad).**

**I own nothing, and I don't own the title reference either (from Joy Luck Club) or parts of the plot that are similar to a chapter in that book. This takes place on Lorien, in this oneshot, there are tribes outside of Loric control on the planet and Sidara belongs to one of them**

**/-/-/-**

**Waiting in Between the Trees**

Sidara could not be ashamed of her actions, she spent years hiding in shadow, and then leaped with her fierce gold against the people who enslaved her. The Loric would never know of her vengeance. They would be dead and without knowledge of the tiger in between the trees.

Before they were all dead, they had named her Sidara, the tiger of God. Without Legacies and without contact with the sister tribe, they were living in huts but they had pride and they had each other so they lived on with little fear of animals or what else could attack them.

They came in blazes, demanding all they had to give, seeking the leaders of the tribe, the leader of the Toranian. They demonstrated fierce powers and lusted for the women, a feeling all too evident on their faces.

They strode through the passes between the huts and the families came out, bodies trembling with terror as they strangers demonstrated the scope of their abilities as they walked, not casting glances sideways.

Sidara's people showed defiance in their eyes.

They met with the leader, Avi, and discussed what they called a "treaty."

Sidara listened in.

They introduced themselves as the people of Lorien, the Loric. Avi himself was confused as to what Lorien was. Sidara can sense the disgust in his voice as he explains what it is: the planet. Sidara's tribe called the planet Toran.

And so, a treaty was enacted, they were to work in labor camps as a way to pay taxes and all of their huts were now the property of the Loric. At the end the leader of the Loric threatened that if they misbehaved, they would die.

The powers shown were enough to keep them docile, and Sidara's spirit waited in between the trees.

They worked hard, long days and long nights, each never ending. The master whipped them when they did not work hard enough and he punished them with more work when they lagged behind their duties. He was cruel, yet the Loric praised him.

Soon Sidara realized that the Loric treaty was not a treaty, but enslavement. She wanted vengeance.

Avi died, taken by God as her mother proclaimed. The Loric of the compound showed no mercy to those in mourning. The first ones to be lead away never returned.

So Sidara mourned in secret. Her mother turned her nose up at her, it was not proper for Toranians to hide.

Her mother had told her almost every night, before the Invasion (as they called it) that she was born a tiger spirit in a year when many crops died. Sidara had two sides, one fierce and golden which she leaped with in all of her pride and one shadow side, which waits between the trees waiting for the moment to strike.

Soon more and more of her people led away, those who did nothing, scared into submission, and they never returned. Every day in their small room, Sidara asked her mother why. Her mother answered that God willed this to happen. This answer did not please Sidara.

God only helps those who help themselves.

Finally there are few of her people left and Sidara realizes what the Loric are doing.

They are exterminating them, them! Not the strongest of threats! They were led down the long hallway that leads to what is marked as "Gas Chambers" words that Sidara only understood many years of studying. Sidara only cried later, refusing to let her last chance of revenge leave her.

He saw her small face, the face he had given no time to mature.

This is the Eight Elder of Lorien, someone whispered. Sidara secretly glowed with rage, they called themselves the good people of Lorien, yet they slap those less powerful then them like one swats a fly.

Sidara wondered if the animals they slaughtered for food felt the same way.

The Eight Elder trusted her, and didn't send her with the rest. When Sidara came back, everyone of her people was dead. In the hands of God. God will avenge through the tiger spirit.

Soon she discovered his powers, what the Loric called Legacies, which he demonstrated freely. He could move from one place to another, changed shapes like one of the revered animals of her tribe- what they had called Trenerns. To kill one was to be killed.

He could also sense what would happen and what did happen and what is happening. It did not save him.

Sometimes he would bring her to the Council, like a pet. She would pretend to be docile but secretly gathered information and means for an end.

She lived with him for two years, secretly gathering all the information she could. Defense mainframe, attack strategies. She, without Legacies, manipulated an Elder of Lorien.

She waited between the trees, wanting for them to feel the pain of death and losing those you love.

Then her fierce golden side leaps and the knife is buried in his throat.

_An accident, _they said. _A tragedy. _

Soon the greatest tragedy of all would occur.

_God only helps those who help himself._

The small ship arrives onto the plateau, Sidara is shaken from her thoughts.

Steam comes out of it, not a horrendous smell, before the men in black uniforms come out.

"You promised us information," they say in a wonderfully clear voice in her language.

Sidara feels a rush, likening it to nervous energy of vengeance, as she answers, "Here."

She thrusts forward the papers, every note and every passcode, every weakness and every strength and how to turn strengths into weaknesses. How many soldiers would be needed to attack which areas. The Eight Elder had unknowingly taught her well.

They take a blood sample of her and nod and look pleased at the results.

"Meet us here tomorrow at 7 meridia," they use the Toranian method of keeping time.

They survey the information, and nervousness fades from Sidara. She knwos she did her job well.

The Loric are too naive, and they kill without thinking.

They leave without thanking her. Sidara looks up at the sky and whispers, _You will be avenged. God's hands will guide me to victory. Your deaths will not be in vain._

She repeats it next morning, in her sleep, and in the sunlight.

And when the shadows fall, her sun rises with the Mogadorians. Her plans work like perfection, and Sidara feels at peace.

She floats with the feeling of revenge well executed, as the Mogadorians guide her to one of their ships and they take off of the plateau.

Sidara sees the place where her tribe was, recognizing each curve of land. She sees a small ship descending away.

_Now you will know what it is to be the last of your kind, butchered by those who could not care less._

_Now you are at peace, loved ones._

And when the night that never ends, came, just as it did for her people, Sidara is waiting in between the trees, not seen, not found, not remembered, but still there.


	2. In the Dark Night

**Thanks for the reviews! (I will try to think of something for the prompts, but for now this came out)**

**Just to be clear, this is Eight when he was around nine years old. And I made Reynolds more understanding and have a humanistic (or Loricistic) point of view because no other Loric so far mentioned does.**

**/-/-/-**

**In the Dark Night**

"Why can't we go home?" he asks into the dark night.

"This is home," his guardian, not his father but a father figure nonetheless, responds, too tired to anticipate the next question.

"No, our r_eal _home," the boy emphasizes. He holds the toy his guardian bought him, patting the soft fur with his small hands.

"You remember that?" his guardian asks in shock. Reynolds turns over to face his Garde, surprise masked by the absence of a moon.

"Of course I do," the boy says stubbornly.

"What do you remember?" Reynolds asks, the workings of memories were a foreign language to him.

"How it was warm at first, and the pretty pink flowers that were around where I was," the uncertainty is breathtakingly clear in his voice. "Then it was cold all of a sudden, like it fell asleep."

Reynolds waits for his young Garde to say something more.

Eight, or as Reynolds calls him, Joseph, is silent for a long time.

"What else happened? What is Lorien?" he asks.

Reynolds is silent for a while before choosing to say everything he could, "Lorien. Lorien is where we are from. We are not humans like the people you see and talk to every day. We lived on a beautiful planet, with the pink flowers you described. It was magically warm all the time. The only wars were millennium before-"

"What's a millennium?"

"It's a thousand years," Reynolds explains impatiently. "And the planet was in peace. We had contact with Earth, and with another race, more savage than ours and with a long history of tribal problems. While our planet thrived, theirs fell into disrepair under all of their technological advancements. They were desperate and we were the victims that fell to their hands. We fell, too fast and too easily, our numbers slaughtered by the hundreds," his voice grows faint and choked, Reynolds blinks several time, biting back tears and the images of those long dead. He knew the day of telling his young Garde would come.

"We left along with eight other children and their guardians, and the driver to the ship. Everyone else who stayed, died by a genocide. We are the last of the Loric, you are Lorien's Legacy."

Eight balls his hands under his blanket, the words fill his heart with burning, he isn't sure about what, "I will kill them."

"It is your destiny," Reynolds says quietly, tears freely running down his face in the dark night. He is glad that Eight cannot see him. Some day he will tell Eight more, when he is ready understand.

"What is a g-genocide?" Eight has difficulty pronouncing this word.

"The deliberate destruction of a certain group of people," Reynolds answers quietly.

"Has it happened on Earth?" Eight asks, mind immediately side-tracked.

"Yes, many times."

"When will we come home?" Eight asks after a long time.

"For now this is home. But you will come back to Lorien and bring it back to it's glory," the longing in Reynold's heart swells but he reminds himself that it is Eight who will rebuild Lorien without him. And he will join the Loric with the Gods of the heavens.

"When will the rest of the Loric come back?" Eight asks.

Reynolds is confused, "When you find them here on Earth."

"No the other Loric, the ones who went away when the Mogadorians in-in-va-ded," Eight says, he has trouble pronouncing the word.

Reynolds does not answer. Children cannot understand death. Neither can adults, no one understands death until they have faced the eyes of the demons themselves.

After a long time, Reynolds had thought Eight had fallen asleep until he turns over to face him with his bright stare. His tears had long since dried and replaced with a sense of satisfaction of Eight knowing his Legacy.

"Are there people here, on Earth," Eight says the word with difficulty, "who are asking right now when they will be able to come home? People who are not at home, but want to come home?"

"Yes," Reynolds says after thinking for a long time in the night. "People are the same everywhere, ideas stay the same for the thousands of years. Loric, humans."

On that, Cepan and Garde, father and son, fall asleep together in the dark night.

**/-/-/-/-**

**I made the Loric polytheistic and the tribe (and others) mentioned in the oneshot before are monotheistic. **


	3. Shadows Rise

**Alright, the Elders mentioned:**

**Pittacus Lore- 4th (yes I'm holding that Four is Pittacus's reincarnation. Too much points to it.)**

**Seoula- 5th**

**The main character- 7th**

**Eight is dead (from the first oneshot). ****Nine dies in this one (Minerva. Yes I made previous Elder Nine a girl). ****Rosyn is the 2nd Elder, Caven is the 1st. Finis (briefly mentioned) is the 3rd. **

**I used Greek Mythology, except the power switched around a little. Ignore what Henri said about Lore gathering the Elders on the morning of the attack. This is less dramatic, but I may do this from other Elder's points of views.**

/-/-/-/-

**Shadows Rise**

_The Loric are under attack._

Fateful words on a fateful day, a beautiful morning with beautiful faces. The last.

Yet I come in to the classroom, heart pounding but mouth smiling. The young Garde- not even seven years old yet!- stare at me mouth gaping at the sight of what to them is a God.

The teacher heaps thank you's on me, and the cameras follow me and position themselves behind the class. I meet the eyes of the young children knowing someday I may be training some of them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see William press her wrist to her ear, then say something back. I continue reading the story, but my eyes try to lock with hers.

She comes over and brings her face to my ear, "The Loric are under attack," she whispers to me. My blood freezes and she goes back to the side, staring in the same direction as she was before, but pressing buttons on her wrist.

_What's going on? I was just told the Loric are under attack!_ I ask Minerva, my face betrays nothing but I can't stop digging my fingernails into my skin.

I continue reading, but disconnect myself from the story. I can't leave now, the kids will worry. Besides, under attack from whom? Eight, may the Lords above rest his soul, eliminated all enemies that could do that. It is nothing.

_The Mogadorians have arrived. _Is her only response.

_Minerva? Minerva?_

The Mogadorians? The alien race from the planet Mogadore? We have not had contact with them for many decades! They would not want to try us, we are more powerful then them.

Minerva never jokes. My breathing quickens a little bit, then I look at the little children and calm myself. Maybe she was joking. I imagine her laughing her heart out on the walls because of my furious pleas, and playing cynically with her Holograms. The absurd image comes me a little.

Just as I think that, a bomb sounds outside.

Lorien is under attack. My heart stops, and then beats faster, and I struggle to keep my fingers from moving in circles.

I smile and tell the kids who are craning to see the explosion, "See Apollo is still mad at Gaia."

The kids laugh and return to listening to the story that I continue to read. Nothing is lost among the teachers though, and I drill it in my head to stay calm, be like Lore who can keep a straight face through anything.

I contact Rosyn, finding her in the capital, _Where is Pittacus? _I frantically scream into her head.

_He's in orbit, he's not coming? With Seoula. I'm here in the capital, the Mogs are invading, the Mogs are invading, they will kill us all! They leave no survivors, there is nothing we can do here, I'm the only Garde, people are dying everywhere? How could the Gods allow this? _

We are dead, the two most powerful Garde on this planet are not on this planet. Right when the Mogadorians are invading! I want to go up, right now, and strangle Pittacus with my bare hands and put Seoula back to where she came from with greetings from me to Hades.

I tell her to calm down and focus on protecting those around her and getting them to the ports. I can't even calm down myself. I finish up the story, my voice only betraying the slightest tremble.

I close the book, wrapping up the story with a smile. The children clap, mesmerized (my Legacy helping). I banish any thought of worry from their minds, not able to do the same to myself.

What would Pittacus do?

The teacher tells the students to thank me and they do, I need to stay calm. I whisper to the teacher to get them to the ports. She nods.

Pittacus would not have stayed for seven minutes reading a myth, while his people were under attack. I failed, for seven minutes I did nothing after being told that the Loric are under attack.

I wave to the children and leave, the staff following me before dispersing immediately. I run across the field fast as I can, letting the staff yell after me in desperation, dive into the lake and swim as fast as I can. I surface to smoke over the city, the two tallest buildings have gaping holes in them, burning slowly.

Lorien is under attack. I look up and see ships. Before thinking, I lift up a burning piece of metal and hurl it up at the ships, it falls into the water. I adopt the steely focus Pittacus is known for, and stand on the beaches shooting lightning at the next ship. After it rips through two of them, I charge another bolt of lightning, sweeping my arms around in a circle.

Suddenly the fabled haze of battle comes over me, and I move in to protect the giant screaming crowd, lightning bolts wreaking destruction. Other Garde move to the front, taking care of the beasts. We must protect our people. I heal and fight simultaneously, knowing that there must be other healers among our ranks.

I see Caven run towards me with his spear in hand. He battles the infantry behind him using his first Legacy, and soon we are one army together, taking down ships and Mogadorians.

I remember a warm summer day when he first discovered it. Caven had just broken up with his girlfriend- a relationship I had long since declared a fling and nothing more- and he was ranting to me about everything that was wrong with her, how could she. After he finished I told him that he got his first Legacy.

"Enact the emergency plan!" I yell to him over the noise of battle.

He stares at me, fear breaking through his eyes, "We aren't getting out alive."

"What are you talking about? Get yourself together and go enact the emergency plan, and meet the Next Generation!" I scream louder. I press my hand to the burn I only just noticed, the pain I can't even notice. Someone comes up to me and offers a bloody leg, I heal it without hesitation.

"We aren't getting out alive," he says again, voice quiet and breaking.

I lower my voice, "Go to the Next Generation and place the Charm on them. Send them to Earth. We are getting out of this alive."

He nods, clearly disbelieving him, and I scream, no one hears in the din of battle.

We are outnumbered 100 to 1. And this is just in the capital. I try to keep myself from sobbing like a little boy. I will die protecting my people.

The scattered Mogs around start gaining on us, the other Garde try to usher their families someplace else.

Caven tells me he enacted the emergency plan, the Next Generation has left.

Little children responsible for Loric fate.

Something lands in my arm and pain rips through it. I move my hand to it, and the hole is closed. When I look around there is nothing left around me. There is dust, there are dead animals that are not Loric. There are no people. The city is gone. I crane to see the other side of the shore, a few buildings left, smoldering remains.

I charge lightning, rage increasing by the second, by the draw of my fingers, the squeeze of the two that require it. I release it into the sky, it darkens and there is only that white streak until it's gone. My energy leaves me and I sink to my knees. I don't dare to open my eyes to see anything and everything

_Rosyn? Minerva? Caven? Finis?_

_Pittacus? Seoula? _

_The Loric are under attack._

_This has happened before and this will happen again._

_/-/-/-_

Pittacus watches from above, the planet slowly turning grey, the Mog ships coming away in giant crowds. Tears run down his cheeks, and Seoula comes sits next to him and brings her arms around him, her dry face against his. She doesn't cry.

Seoula presses her knife against her finger then runs it down the exposed wiring. Pittacus barely notices her as she says that they are heading to Earth.

"Lorien has fallen," she whispers.

He failed.

-/-/-/-

**The last part is reality for my other story: The War of the Nine, same with the Final Legacy(-ies).**


	4. Back and Forth

**Fluffy. Short.**

/-/-/-/-

**Back and Forth**

Eight sprawls on the couch of his suite in the hotel they are staying at, looking down at the forest beyond. He can't fathom why they decided to stay here, not close to anything of interest, but now he understands why. It's the perfect place for a needed break.

Seven sits on the other side of the couch, her legs in his lap. She has the newspaper open, and reads it quietly, while Eight bounces a ball against the floor that Five had described as "classy my ass." His right arm dangles over the arm of the couch as he orchestrates the movements of the ball as it bounces up and down, in air and on the ground for a brief instant. Seven hides it well, but Eight can see her clench his jaw and glance slightly sideways to meet her eyes. Seven smiles slightly.

"Do you mind?" she asks before turning another page.

"No," Eight replies.

Seven rolls her eyes and groans playfully before flicking her eyes back to whatever Earth thing she was reading. But then there is a gleam in her eyes that Eight distrusts.

Before he has the chance to catch the ball, the newspaper is on the desk and his ball is bouncing from Eight's hand.

"Give that back!" Seven immediately whines. So they said their "I love you"'s and all, but that gives Seven NO right to do this.

"Only if you promise not to bounce it," Seven slowly says, smirking slightly, Nine-style.

"No," he crosses his arms, then unfolds his ankles.

"Then I will just keep it," Seven simpers then tosses the ball from hand to hand, then shielding it by her telekinesis when she bounces it on the floor. Eight waits for a few seconds before breaking the telekinesis by a circle of her finger.

She lunges towards him, the ball is being held above his head as Seven grabs for it on her position on top of him.

"What, are, you, doing!" Seven shrieks in between gasps, holding the ball higher and higher, Eight desperately swipes for it, always one step behind.

"Getting my ball back, what else does it look like?"

They play for another few minutes until Eight pushes himself back against the couch, "Your arms are inhumanly long."

"_Eight," s_he says.

_"Seven," _he replies, and just as she stares at her quintessentially with her gorgeous dark gaze, he lunges back for the ball. Seven wraps her hands around his waist, trying to keep him away.

The ball drops from his arms and before Eight can catch it rolls under the couch. There is a moment for silence and then it transforms into wrestling and then a tickle fight, the ball forgotten and Eight over Seven, laughing until his sides hurt and screeching "Get off of me!" as Seven exacts her revenge for him losing the ball. She's laughing, too, and Eight can feel it in his chest, bubbly, hiccuping, and _his_.

"Oh my god, am I interrupting something?" Eight hears and he immediately pulls Seven from him and eases back, nonchalantly grabbing the newspaper. "Oh my god, you so were doing-"

"Get your head out of the gutter, Ella," Seven says, cheeks turning pink. Nowhere near as red as his.

"Me? I was totally not thinking about that. Well I was thinking that you were- no totally clean thoughts. It's not like Five has given me the Talk yet or something. Me? Mind in the gutter? How can it be? It totally wasn't? What's a gutter?" Seven waves her away, and as she is descending down the stairs, they hear an add-on, "Just use protection or a con-"

"Ella!" Seven shrieks, Eight hides laughter.

"Okay! I'm gone! Left you! In tranguil- peace!"

As soon as she is in earshot, Eight bursts into laughter, and Seven can't keep her death glare up for long enough, and she joins him as well.

In the midst of giggles, both his and Seven's, he picks up the drawing Seven was working on before.

"This is really nice," he says.

"Not yet," Seven sighs. "But it will be."


	5. Prepared

**Doing prompts from the 30 day challenge. This is in Chicago, I know that was a very tight timeframe but whatever... You know when Nine says that he goes jogging around Lake Michigan? Is it just the part around Chicago because the whole thing is about 56,000 km in circumference...  
**

**Yep this is a shortie. So will be the next one.  
**

**/-/-/-/-**

**Prepared**

We had been so prepared. With guns in each drawer, brought to us by this country's wonderful lack of laws, I had trained and trained and trained, Sandor had set up an entire network of spying on the city, we had a two story penthouse, perfect for defense and offense. We were hiding in plain sight.

It was my fault, I wasn't a good little boy who did exactly as told. And someone else paid the price.

Had I went along with everything, we would be in a different position. We, the garde. Me.

But soldiers

If there was one thing I found out from watching too many movies, it is that soldiers are prepared. Always.

What does that make me?

/-/-/-

I roll out of my bed, flicking my eyes away from the photograph before gently removing it from the frame and tossing it into the trash with telekinesis.

Again, it's a shock seeing me on the mirror, heavily muscled and much taller than I can remember being. Girls must think I'm hot(ter).

Maybe that's some of the preparation in here, what came from sitting in a cell.

I ignore that memory.

When I come to the kitchen I find the pack of Quakers Instant Oatmeal and wish Four was here to make it quicker. Seriously, the three minutes to prepare it are too much. It should be instant, no preparation needed. Liars.

Four comes out, half asleep and in a T-shirt that covers his flatpack.

"Someone came out late," I smirk. "Could've heated this shit."

He gives me a look that says that I'm crazy. Crazy is the new sensible. It's not like being sensible works in the face of lack of judgment.

"You wanna be a tourist or not?" I offer, the smirk not fading one bit.

He groans. What does he have to be annoyed with?

After another half an hour of convincing him, begging him, and then him concluding that I do in fact have feelings (no real ones that he knows of) he agrees.

We come down the elevator in silence, me clenching and releasing tension in my fists, almost giddy with excitement of being in Chicago, not just seeing it from 100 floor up.

When we get outside, it's funny, looking at Four's face, him looking around the city with the new eyes of someone who has seen too little.

Oh the joys of the weak-minded.

I ask the question that I didn't think I would, "How prepared were you for the war?"

He looks up at me confused. I must say the fact that he has four inches to look up is the funnest part of this.

"I had my first Legacy, the Lumen," I nod, betraying nothing. "I was training. I had Sam and Sarah. So yeah, I guess prepared. The Mogs didn't come with a warning though and Six wasn't part of preparation either."

His eyes cloud over, and I immediately know what he is thinking of.

The image of bruises and cuts comes over me, and I shove it out immediately, focusing on the waters of Lake Michigan.

It's weird to be here not jogging. It's almost spring.

We walk in silence, me faster and ahead, him walking slower, sinking in the choppy grayness of the rainy day.

I don't spend time looking at it, a sight that is too familiar and brings too much up inside of me.

Eventually he jogs to catch up to me, and again we walk in silence when we come back to the city. It tires out neither of us, and I start thinking about training before my mind wanders elsewhere.

Looking at him, the wide-eyed innocence of not knowing, it is hard to imagine how he was prepared too. He seems so willing to just drop everything, everything!, for a girl.

He lets his emotions take so much hold of him, it's a risk. And he never learns. He did not learn, not as I did.

And that is where the similarity ends.

Maybe I had been more prepared than him, but the same things brought both of us down. Yet we learned different lessons, and that is why I am still the better soldier than him.

I smirk at everything and nothing, at least I had more reasons than that, although that was...

In any way, the present trumped preparation as did emotions. Had I not is a different reality, one that would not have happened.

Whatever. Past is past.

It only matters in preparing for the future.

/-/-/-

**Do you know how badly I want to do a one-shot about the Five from my other fanfic? One with her and her past lover, in 3rd person omniscient based on one of the songs I love?**

**I'll try to get the first chapter of the Swan Lake AU up tomorrow.  
**


	6. Chapter 6

**This is directly related to my other fanfic: The War of Nine. This is canon for that story in terms of Five's history, and this won't be revealed in this way in there. Her name is Rie in Japan_._ Outside of his thoughts I refer to her as Five but in his thoughts/ dialogue she is Rie.  
**/-/-/

**Numbers**

_What are you going to do? Kill me?_

_I never hold back._

_Neither do I._

_Then you are horrible at this._

_Then why has it taken you, a master, a total of forty five minutes to beat me?_

_I was going easy on you._

_You never hold back._

Tsuko comes to the door, hesitant to knock. He knows exactly what is inside and can guess the exact look on her face, yet he cannot bring himself to touch the wood.

He hasn't exactly been quiet, she should know he is there. After gathering every ounce of courage he has, Tsuko knocks on the door, a little too quickly.

No answer. He takes this as a sign to come inside.

The room is much neater than normal, although it is normally very neat. There is a suitcase Tsuko has never seen before on the bed, which is perfectly made. And Rie comes

"You have ten seconds to leave before I kick your ass hard enough to send it back to hell," she says, dark eyes burning with ice. "Ten, nine-"

"Rie, this is idiotic."

"-Seven-"

"Are you doing this to spite me?"

_And how would he have arrived to that conclusion, _Five thinks. She's too tired to smirk

"You have an inflated ego," she responds. "Six-"

"I just wanted to ask-"

"Five-"

"Will you shut up and let me talk to you!" he finally explodes. He pauses, breathing deeply. _Why is it now when you make it difficult to talk to you?_

Five stops, simpering and crossing her arms, sitting against the bed-post. Tsuko opens his mouth to say something, anything, but the look in her eyes, the amusement but fatigue jars his tongue.

He has never seen her eyes show emotion before, but then he remembers, walking through the workouts without emotion, without a thought in her head. Then her eyes, at the same time showing nothing also reflecting something like confusion and pain. It was well masked.

She always masked things well, there was never a detectable waver.

"Why are you leaving?" he manages to say. He knows the answer, he just wants to hear her talk. Anything for that. Anything for something that reduced him to behaving like a child.

Five struggles for an answer, rummaging through many, many lies. One comes to mind, a broad, vague truth.

"Because I want to," it's the truth, more than anything and Tsuko knows this

Five doesn't embellish at all, not wanting to say anything on the topic of... everything. Again.

The next part is not what he expects.

"Because I have to."

There is a long silence, neither of them willing to say anything. Such long silences became a custom in their relationship, but now the silence was like shadows, less so the prior warmth.

''I'm leaving. There is nothing you can do about it," her gaze hardens.

"I know."

"Then why are you here?" she asks, smirking. She wants him to stay, keep her from leaving. Five knows Tsuko won't though.

"I respect that," he says after a long silence. And he means it, both Tsuko and Five no that.

He sighs and asks, "Will you at least keep in touch?"

"What am I, a sixth grader?" again smiling yet no happiness in the smile that tells him that she will. It pains her to start the numbers again, they remind her too much of what her life will become, "Four."

Then she stops, smiling down a little, shoulders shaking from supressed laughter.

Five winces, suddenly, and Tsuko looks in confusion. She looks down again, focusing on her feet and breathing deeply.

_Don't cry, Rie- Five. I'm Five now. Don't you dare cry._

"Your choice and you made it," he says. She remains in that position not twitching a muscle. "Want me to say something cliched?"

"Go for it," she says, cracking a smile before turning around abruptly to zip up her suitcase, and straighten the pillows on the bed. She turns back to him, a sense of finale on her face.

"Wherever you go I'll be with you," he can barely say it with a straight face.

"Hah. Good luck with that," they both laugh.

_What may be our last, _Tsuko thinks.

She sighs again and says, "I made my choices, I pay the price. I'm going and there is nothing you can do about it."

She was always good at masking things well. Not a waver of emotion on her face. Ever. Until now, and Tsuko was willing to bet that this would be the last time.

Showing emotions is good. Not that he ever does it either.

"Nice knowing you for two years. I didn't regret a thing."

"You never went easy on me," then she says more to herself than anything. "Yeah, you know me."

He walks away, _you know I still love you. I know you hate me. But I still love you. Yet, you are going. Not because of me, although mostly because of me.  
_

_I still love him. Why? _she thinks. Then she remembers what she has to do. _Well I do look up to him. That's normal. And his help will benefit me a lot._

Three.

For the last time, he looks back to see her in the doorway, meeting his eyes. He watches as she turns away then takes her suitcase, throws it out of the window, tucks herself into the window frame. She pauses and thinks, _I still love him. Why?_

Two.

She turns back and stares at him again, hoping, both of them are, that this will not be the last time.

Then she drops from view.

One.

_Five now. Not Rie. Not Liliya. Five._

Zero.

Dramatic exits are not for people like them.

/-/-/-

**I ship them so hard but probably because only I know what happens to Tsuko later (in book five).  
**


End file.
